To Indigo, Tanith Lee [best ereader for comics .TXT] 📗

Vilmos was his own man now.

Just then the Master’s ancient toad pulled itself out of the water also, and squatted on the bank, staring at him. As the engendered flame was extinguished, Vilmos saw both the toad’s eyes, and the evil jewel between them, had kept the terrific dark blue of the Indigo Instant. Only the toad and he had escaped alive. And perhaps it too had been able to garner some power.

In all his life no single human had either joyed or contented Vilmos. But he might benefit from a companion.

“Come then,” he called to the toad, and like an image of black jade, understanding him, it lifted itself and approached. “Which way shall we go?” he inquired of it. The toad reversed itself, and Vilmos saw that over there, in the east, dawn was commencing. He had no need to fear light any longer. Nor dark, if it came to it. “East then,” said Vilmos. And eastward they went.

TWENTY-THREE

At first I thought I’d killed him outright.

When I pulled him back from the piano, his face was pallid and slightly puffy and I couldn’t see him breathing. But there was the vaguest pulse in his throat. Still alive then?

Unusual strength can be accessed in times of stress. I’d read of it, even written about it. Now I found it to be true.

I dragged Sej off the seat and from the room, along the hall into the kitchen, without trouble.

What I did next was a precaution. It was my more pedantic side, making certain, covering all possible eventualities. A writer’s action, or the deliberate murderer’s.

Having got him on the floor, leaning by the table I pulled him forward, and cracked his head, the back of it, a second time very hard against the table’s corner. Then I allowed him to fall.

Still I couldn’t see any breathing. Yet the pulse in his neck stumblingly kept on.

It didn’t really matter, did it? He wasn’t going to interfere in what came next.

Perhaps I should note my state of mind during all this. I was flatly calm. I was rational, unexcited and concise. I might have been organizing my washing, or checking over an especially-to-me boring proof chapter in one of my novels. This mood had opened up in me like a well of cool water the moment I saw him standing outside my door in the rain. Partly, at the beginning, I’d wondered if it would suddenly desert me, leaving me after all unsure and panicked, unable to make a decision. But it had not. And in some odd mental fashion, I’d known from that same first moment what I must do, and roughly how I would do it. As if, as with the plots of my stories, I’d already written out a careful synopsis, and only had to consult that from time to time in order to construct the book.

Once I’d seen him sprawled on the floor, I went upstairs and got ready.

I was particularly facile at packing by this time. It was after all my third attempt to escape. On this occasion however, I didn’t pack all the documents, only birth certificate, passport, bank details and those of my savings, plus their necessary various cards and other safeguards. Some of these things I might legitimately take with me when travelling. Some of them I could, if I had to, claim to have mislaid years ago, as many of us do. While some of the items now left out would, after tonight, be redundant anyway.

Naturally I packed more clothes, more toiletries. Again legitimate. I was going to stay with my poor upset old friend at Cheston for quite a while, wasn’t I? Duran believed I’d gone up there before. I’d mentioned Matthew’s frame of mind post his ‘betrayal’ by Sylvia. From the brief picture I had then, perhaps innocently, painted, Duran definitely wouldn’t be astonished I’d been begged to go back. As for George and Vita next door, those two silly old fools hadn’t seen me for days during Sej’s last sojourn, and only had his word for it I was in the house. While, as Mr C had pointed out witnesses, (especially elderly ones) were unreliable.

None of this might help, of course.

But it was reasonable for me. After so many invented third-hand literary alibis and get-outs, to fabricate something now.

When I had everything ready in the two larger bags, including the two bits of the red glass dog, carefully wrapped, I came back downstairs.

I bent and touched him again. He felt very cold and lay totally inert. I couldn’t find any pulse now. But being no doctor, I couldn’t rely on that.

From the freezer I took a pack of pork sausages. The remains of the pizza and the wine, mugs, glasses, plates, the coffee, still lay on the table. On the hob I put an over-full pan of oil, and placed four of the sausages in it. Just the sort of late snack a young healthy man might fancy, particularly if depressed, even after all the pizza eaten between seven and eight o’clock. The cake was still on the side, too. It should burn very well.

It wouldn’t be a problem that the sausages were frozen; just slow everything down a little. Which was a good thing, given the circumstances.

I lit the hob, kept it very low.

Outside the kitchen the night lay ink black, a few stars showing dully like wet grains of sugar.

I hoped the fir tree wouldn’t be affected. Probably not. Long before the wooden fences went up someone would have heard or smelled something wrong at No 74.

The cooking oil I sloshed liberally round the kitchen, the table, and over him. How lucky I’d bought an extra bottle. There was enough to trail along the hallway and the bottom of the stairs; even the library carpet got a sprinkle. But books burn beautifully, as Ray Bradbury let us know in Fahrenheit 451. That is, if we’d missed the history lesson that began even